September 20, 2012

Thompson was up 9 points in the polls a month ago, and now he's down 9 points. It's useless to fret about whether the Marquette poll is accurate: How inaccurate can it be? How did it happen? Tammy Baldwin ran negative ads against the once presumptively popular Tommy Thompson, and they obviously worked. Here's the one I've seen on TV most often:

That's an AFSCME Independent Expenditure ad, not Baldwin's own campaign. Here's AFSCME's YouTube page, where you can see the kind of specific, effective material they are putting out in many local campaigns. For example, here's one in the Ohio-16 district, using a very similar attack — a politician went to Washington and got allied with "special interests" — and similar — and better — use of animated graphics to present a simple, clear message.

Tommy must have been thinking that he could cruise to victory, but the old man is getting kicked around.

ADDED: Tommy's campaign tried to go negative, via email to various conservative contacts, just before she did her big DNC speech, but Tommy got burned. Tammy supporters were able to portray this material as lesbian-bashing, and, in fact, that meanness — more than the ads — may be at the root of Tommy's troubles.

Re Ann's point about meanness. I wish I could say I lived in a country where the electorate didn't vote based on the superficial appearance of niceness and other such softheaded notions, but I don't. That country does not exist.

garage mahal said...Dems surging in Senate races around the country seems to be a trend

Yes!

U.S. Sen. Scott Brown has moved into a narrow lead over rival Elizabeth Warren while his standing among Massachusetts voters has improved despite a year-long Democratic assault, a new UMass Lowell/Boston Herald poll shows.

The GOP incumbent is beating Warren by a 50-44 percent margin among registered Bay State voters

@garage:The Marquette pollster says if they adjusted the poll to match voter participation from last year Baldwin still leads 48%-43%

Certainly true from what I can see of the numbers in the methodology, but why didn't they current numbers? Why did they sample from 2009 knowing it inflates the lead? They sampled Obama to D+0 using 2011 numbers. Why the difference?

This morning I saw an ad that is suppose to be negative on Baldwin showing her exclaiming Damn! I think this clip of a young candidate with energy may just backfire on old Tommy who has to fake his conviction, when he can remember to.

They over-weighted Dems by nearly twice the margin of the 2008 Dem wave election to get the "headline" number they wanted.

WI was D+6 when Obama was elected. To think that WI will be D+11 this year, after three straight Republican state-wide election victories and a WI native son on the R ticket is wishcasting of a high order.

Or deliberate propagandizing to help the "home team" of Democrats.

Has Baldwin been hammering Thompson with negative ads? Of course. Does that matter to the margin? Of course.

Will WI voters elect a Madison radical lesbian who has never run state-wide over a moderate conservative they elected governor multiple times when the electorate was more Dem than it is today? No way in hell.

Romney/Ryan win WI by 2.5% and Thompson wins by at least 9%.

This poll was an attempt at R voter-enthusiasm dampening and has been cut apart thoroughly for it's obvious flaws in less than 24 hours.

The Marquette pollster says if they adjusted the poll to match voter participation from last year Baldwin still leads 48%-43%

I'll say this as politely as I can: bullshit.

Think about what you're saying.1. D+11 means you think there is an 11% advantage for Dems in the population that's going to translate into likely voters. Should we ask Tom Barrett if he agrees?2. Then you say that if this polling discrepancy is corrected, presumably in a toss-up state that has leaned R in all recent statewide elections, to a best case D+0 by reducing D sampling by 11%, that support for Baldwin only drops by 2%. More wishful than credible.

CalypsoTake it up with Charles Franklin, I just relayed what he said. I do find it hilarious that some here think there is a conspiracy going on with Charles Franklin carrying water for the Dems though. Charles Franklin!

PPP is coming out with a poll today. They teased they had Obama way up as well.

I don't think he needs to go "negative". He just needs to talk about here support for socialism, big government and debt. If all people here is Tammy's bashing of Tommy they will shy away from him, but as folks here see how much of a leftist she is I doubt she'll make it this year. If we wanted Baldwin we could have stuck with Feingold. Plus there are the big O's negative coat tails too. $16 trillion in debt thanks Tammy!

Nate Silver is a hack who only was "accurate" in 2008 because the Obama campaign was feeding him their internals. His function today is to keep the troops from fleeing the field of battle. He'll still be saying the Rs have no chance of taking the Senate as McConnell is being voted majority leader in January.

Garage: Yes, I am sure that the entire country has decided that 8% unemployment, double the number of people on welfare, staggering new disability claims, 16 Trillion in debt and 1 Trillion annual deficits are the way to go. You would not have noticed the jobless claims today since you are a.) a trust funder and b.) buried in polls and insider scoop on the double secret grand jury that deliberates on and on. But the numbers, again, are shitty.

Oh I know you're just parroting, gm, and mostly using the poll as a stick to poke the Althouse bees nest, but I was simply asking those here to THINK about what Marquette is selling. It doesn't pass the smell test.

CalypsoAll I can tell you is I dug thru these Marq/PPP polls that were showing consistent Walker leads. And I just didn't believe them. "They are oversampling 262 area code!" They are oversampling the elderly!" They undersampled 608 area code!" "They expect a larger R turnout than the last election!"

@garage:All I can tell you is I dug thru these Marq/PPP polls that were showing consistent Walker leads.

If so, you said nothing about it at the time.

So the two Marquette polls use the same Gallup data that says adults are D+5. One poll oversamples R and corrects to D+0. One poll oversamples D and corrects to D+11.

Does it not bother you that they ostensibly used the same data to get such different estimates?

Are you actually interested in knowing the truth? Or are you happy to have any hook to hang your desired result on, regardless of how well-secured it might be?

While I address you specifically, my question is equally directed to everyone else here. Why don't we make a collective effort to understand how the poll is supposed to work, before we decide we can ignore it, or treat it as gospel?